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Did Biden Just Sink the US Navy?
The US Department of Defense recently rolled out its spending plans for 2022. As part of DOD’s massive $715 billion budget plan, most observers expected an increase in the USN’s shipbuilding budget, especially after the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, army Gen. Mark Milley, said he endorsed an expanded fleet even if it meant less money for the Army, because of concerns about growing Chinese power.
But to almost everybody’s surprise the Navy’s construction budget appears to have been slashed. Apart from the big Ford-class carriers, the 2022 budget request asks for eight new vessels, only four of which are combatants, one destroyer, one frigate, and two nuclear attack submarines. This new construction fails to compensate for the fact that the current budget calls for the decommissioning of twelve vessels, seven cruisers, one amphibious assault ship, and four Littoral Combat Ships. Conceivably, since ships are assumed to have 30-year life spans, less new construction combined with too many ships leaving service could lead to a fleet strength of just 240 ships. In the past, when the USN decommissioned substantial numbers of ships, as happened in the 1970s and 1990s, and then tried to build back the fleet, the Navy was never able to regain the original numbers. According to Breaking Defense, a more likely target considering the current budget environment is 290 ships.
That number is still marginally below the 308 vessels proposed by the Obama administration, and far below the 355-ship fleet the Trump people wanted to build. A 290-ship fleet, or even the old Obama number of 308 ships is still far below the projected Chinese fleet strength of possibly 400 ships by 2025.
It’s been pointed out that US ships are individually very capable and the USN is certainly working hard to improve that capability by embracing the idea of “distributed lethality,” a concept that involves putting anti-ship missiles on virtually everything that floats. Observers who are sanguine about China’s fleet size also like to draw attention to the navies of America’s Asian allies, including the technologically advanced Japanese and South Korean fleets. Additionally, they never fail to mention the power of the USN’s fleet of nuclear-powered carriers.
While such optimism is laudable, it may fail to take fully into account the nature of 21st century maritime warfare. First, the viability of the USN’s big carriers is increasingly in doubt. During any naval war with China in the Western Pacific, US carriers will have to run a gauntlet of cruise missile-armed bombers, advanced conventional submarines, and land-based anti-ship ballistic missiles like the DF-21D.
You don’t have to sink a carrier to make it useless, just put one or more big holes in its flight deck.
Chinese attacks on the US fleet and the ships of allied navies, and their retaliatory response, will undoubtedly take the form of massed missile strikes. In such an exchange of fire, a reduced US fleet may not fare very well at all.
The Okinawa campaign at the end of WWII is the closest example in the historical record to what a high-intensity 21st-century naval war, with its massed missile salvos, might look like. In a desperate attempt to halt the American advance on their homeland, the Japanese flung wave after wave after wave of Kamikazes at the huge American fleet. Before the attacks petered out, the suicidal pilots of the Divine Wind sank or damaged 251 American and allied ships, and those losses were inflicted despite the very heavy air defenses mounted by the allied fleet.
Apart from those air defenses, the saving grace of the US fleet was its sheer size. When WWII ended in 1945, the US Navy had 99 aircraft carriers of all types in service. Having a high-tech fleet is wonderful, but if the numbers are too small, it can be decimated by a much larger fleet whose technology doesn’t have to be superior, just ‘good enough.’
The coming decline in US fleet strength has certainly not gone unnoticed in the capitals of America’s Asian allies. When comparing the growing power of China’s fleet with a shrinking USN, people in Taipei, Seoul, Tokyo, and Canberra might be justified in feeling abandoned by their most powerful ally. If the current lapse in US shipbuilding continues for more than a few years, America’s Asian lies could feel compelled to take other measures to safeguard their security.
Published in Military
The Arleigh Burke program started in 1988 so 33 years ago. They entered service in 1991 or 30 years ago, and there are 68 in service, 7 under construction, and 3 on order. There have been a number of upgrades and improvements to the base design. Its replacement, since the Zumwalt was tabled, isn’t expected until the 2030s. We are going to be using the Flight III DDGs for a long time.
And the Navy has corrected the [REDACTED] for brains in its puzzle palace which brought us all this hit parade ships of the line?
So were you a tin can sailor? Or a Navy planner? The only things I remember about those ships was thanking God they were behind my carrier so they could rescue the guys who got blown overboard.
My Dad was a Tin Can Sailor, I ended up in the Army, but my undergrad degree was in History and my love was WWII. We definitely need new people doing the Navy planning because the ones we have appear to be committed to an ever smaller Navy as opposed to a growing one. Honestly the Navy is really messed up from procurement to training, and more. Leadership isn’t all that great and seems to want to focus on the wrong issues.
No, they haven’t, that is a totally different problem, though going with an existing Frigate design alleviates much of the issues that we saw with the LCS and Zumwalts.
BTW, don’t mean to cast shade on the USN. But, some of its admirals are dolts.
Dear John/Jane Galt
Countries have alliances to defend their interests. The USA would have never achieved independence without Ben Frank conning the French to enter the war in 1778. Washington had a lot of French friends, on both land and sea, at Yorktown. The Monroe Doctrine would have been a joke without backup from the Royal Navy.
Moving on to WWII, the USA would never have been able to confront Nazi Germany in Europe without the UK as a base of operations. A neutralized or conquered UK would have allowed Hitler to throw his full weight at Russia, which could have resulted in two equally nightmarish outcomes. One, Hitler defeats Russia and winds up controlling everything from the English Channel to the Ural mountains. Two, Stalin defeats Hitler and rolls across Europe to the English Channel. This would have been like Sauron winning the War of the Ring, with darkness covering the land forever. In either case, the USA would have been faced with an overwhelmingly powerful enemy across the Atlantic. All this was prevented by the UK staying in play as a US ally.
After WWII, the USA decided to stay in Europe to block Stalin from gaining control of Western Europe’s industrial base, much of which was still intact despite the war. Again, the USA needed allies on the ground to carry out this policy. The same goes for the Korean War, which was in large part fought to protect Japan and American plans to rebuild its industrial base.
The same goes for the current situation in Asia. The ROKs and Japan have combined firepower that’s very impressive, but even with Aussie thrown in, they’re no match for the PLAN by themselves. The Chinese sub fleet outnumbers the combined ROK-Japan submarine force around tw0 to one. All three nations are building up their militaries (the ROK in large part to keep an eye on North Korea), but it’s going to be several years before these programs come to fruition.
Without a credible US presence to back them up, these nations may be forced to bend their knees to a powerful Chinese fleet. Beijing would then use its intimidating power to turn the terms of trade in Asia against the US, isolating it in the Western Hemisphere. The same goes for Europe, too. without an American presence, Czar Putin would use Russia’s now overwhelming military strength to blackmail the Euros into giving him both financing and technology, and along with Xi Dada, isolate the USA. The US needs a forward position outside its own hemisphere.
Russia’s military strength is considerably less than NATO. They have two strategic advantages. First, as an aggressor, they can concentrate their resources at a specific time and place to achieve a strategic goal. Such as taking the Crimea or Lithuania. Second, is the NATO policy of mutual defense a credible deterrent?